Xenophilia
with thanks to Mike Cope

Elixir, enrichment, enchantment,
ointment for boredom,
balm for the lost and
tonic for trapped souls.

Saviour of grace,
you make the wealthy generous
and expand the minds of the poor,
vitamin against inertia,
replenisher of energies,
zany lover who sees the plenty there is.

Gift of life to itself every day,
you are the secret of eternal youth,
curiosity’s bliss,
beneficiary of earth’s bounty –
Xenophilia, zealously I seek you!

 - Silke Heiss, 1st July 2026
For a live reading of this poem, click here

Leaves of wind

i.

Woman plants herself
face-up to the windblown gums
rush of blood

ii.

Leaves hiss sadness
missing me I must
come again, often

iii.

Lonely trees lonely people
remiss we’ve been remiss
remember us remember yes

7th March 2026

- Silke Heiss

Pearl song

Pearl song in rain shower
illumined by a street light.

Who is the bird,
umbrellaless, with the
undaunted voice?

6 May 2026

Night truth


Moonlight in a woman’s arms
No other sound
A single star
Silver body that you are.

29 June 2026

Signs of the world

Marks of the hand
            runes, lines, letters, symbols
                                  wrinkles in bark.

                                  Wisps of vapour
                                  in Forget-me-not sky
            ink on the page
already dry.

30 June 2026

 - Silke Heiss

Poetry zoom meeting

Tonight my eye overpowers my ear –
the poets' words are smudged
by low bandwidth on my side, but:
the physics of their faces brings out more
than would occur to them to compose!

Eye-shadow, on a poetess's eyelids,
shimmers omniscient lilac,
bewitching my gaze –
the geometry of her eyebrows
is clear, a directive to me
as regards poetry: foreheads shine
their light. One elderly gentleman
carries a cup of skin
at his throat, filled
with magical warblings.
And see the nostrils
of another: fiercely sculpted,
so the asymmetries of truth
can be inhaled truly.
Another's unevenly opening mouth
tells his spirit's wryness,
cautiously trusting, that generous utterance
shall be brought forth
on the tray of a careful, confident tongue.

The reading ends,
what I've been served turns, abruptly, black,
and all disappears
back into the unseen.

– Silke Heiss

Meditation 2

Drop of light,
living flame, round-bellied,
reaching, peaking, pointing,
swaying, dipping in
to my awareness, ancestors
flood in by name
as I meditate upon
the tiny fire
of my soul
rocking on the wick
its warmth and beauty.

– Silke Heiss

Meditation 1

Serenity of stone,
dry at last after the deluge.
Dry blood colour,
kingfisher home.

Kingfisher hovers,
plummets, wallops fish
and swallows.
The bare bones of a poem follow.

The truth is not a shadow,
but the sun throws its outlines down.
No significance, just motion
of pen and pages in the wind,
the trembling shadow
of the hat-band flying away
from under my throat.

– Silke Heiss

Hiku Hikers

Pens scurry over the pages,
accompanied by the boubou’s call
in the almost too cool forest on the dune,
where Estie had to scurry
shivering into a spot of sun.

Dappled light
witnesses the humans,
their creative flames licking,
leaping onto the paper,
burning it not.

– Silke Heiss

Imprint

    i.
Two umber-pelted rams
gallop in parallel –
one on each side of the road.
My car rolls between them.

My blue metal steed slows right down,
as their spiralling horns,
their starry thighs and crested spines,
their taut, violin-bow legs leap by.

    ii.
Hands on the steering wheel,
heading towards town,
my head turns and notices
a crow on a bridge railing.
His beak is open, holding something, food –
or is it a phrase, for me to speak,
a promise from the future,
which the oyster-coloured waters
are still smoothing over?

    iii.
What do I do
with the language
of life, imprinting
its alphabet of blood and flesh
into mine, so they mesh?

    iv.
I write it down.
A new old way of seeing.
Oh, to be a star
on a thigh, and be warm
with brightest being.

– Silke Heiss

New moon night

A chosen man’s breath
on my arm,
frogs and cicadas quiet.

- Silke Heiss, 30 January 2025


Sunshine poem
For Ed and Jacques

Little, legless braai-stand-not,
seated on broken bricks,
weighted with drizzle-infused ash,

beside a blue wheelbarrow
filling up with water,
while waiting for the sunshine
of its very own poem.

 - Silke Heiss, 19 December 2024

Stone-people prayer

Two rocks, in reverence,
eyes closed, necks bowed,
fists held close in prayer,
facing golden sand,
the long evening rays flocking
towards their lack of feet,
their statued selves,
stuck here,
solid in their thanks.

 -  Silke Heiss, 20 January 2025

Mentoring
for Nasru-Dee

The great trees at the bottom of his garden,
sentinels of these seminal hours,
rooting a human soul into community
by means of letters sounding out
alphabets far, far beyond Babel.

The only towers here are the pine,
the poplar, the spruce, planted for love of shade,
thriving in a vale where the decades raised them
to stand tall.

They talk, crawl, with all the time in the world
through the cadences of a love poem,
add words slowly, change them around,
insert the musical notation of punctuation,

and he drinks the mystic tuition
he’s effortlessly drawing out of her,
while she floats in an element so watery and airy,
so near the happy sun, yet barefoot on the earth,
she hardly recognises herself,
the sureness of her voice,
as if it’s always been here, this oneness,
meditating and conceiving
an evergreen sap of being

here, here where their voices mingle with their thoughts,
shared for now, and always,
bringing forth his art
by a magical midwifery
that leaves them both
reverent and humbled.

Silke Heiss, 18 January 2025

Step to the bridge

You step to the bridge
to say good-bye to the
Drakensberg lily in flower.

One bloom’s wilted on the cluster,
four are open to the sun,
four buds still nestling.
Their fullness I’ll likely not see,
as they’ll probably be done on my return.

I turn to go, when suddenly a body
of fragrance
circles my face, anointing
my awareness. I stop,
step down, obedient, from the planks
into the leaf-mould, soft, dark soil
and put my nose between
the white stamens dancing
in the rosy trumpet
of petals. Inhale and hear
in the odour the sweetness of a language
I’m given to compose
in this moment reaching over
between two species, lines that arc
from lily heart to human heart,
one beating, both brimming
with living relatedness.

 - Silke Heiss, 14 January 2025

Save

The moon’s turned golden
as she’s climbed higher,
above the pounding of the waves.

The palms are still,
no breath moves,
save that of my pen,
whispering over the page.

– Silke Heiss, 22nd May 2024

Riddle

What colour
is the crone’s womb?
Luminous milky turquoise it is,
and smooth as silk. A bag full
of magic, under her used-up
udder.

– Silke Heiss, 30th June 2024

Womb of time

New moon velvet hugs the old woman’s skin.
The night is sufficiently warm: naked she glides

her form knows where the furniture is

through luscious darkness.

The soles of her feet track
the edges of mats, carpet, wood,
to the loo, and back to bed

like a seed of desire

conversing with the hidden moon.

Her own mind and body are in hiding
from harsh humanity, who habitually blot,
delete the night with brute power.

How can they see a poem?
How deeply, darkly it is planted, by the moon,
into the very womb
of time.

– Silke Heiss 9th May 2024

Moonbathing

The luminary unspools her silver,
cools my thoughts,
laving, fortifying
my weakened soul.

– Silke Heiss, 22nd May 2024

Strelitzia at night

Lifts her sharp chin and ears,
anticipates the moon
rise over the sea,
which she hasn’t seen.

Hopes, perhaps, to have its music
beamed to her,
by her by now somewhat oblong
friend.

– Silke Heiss, 28th May 2024

Dear Joanne

How can a human get used to grief?
I’ve found grief to be
forever the stranger,
pointing ways to walk
that are unfamiliar
to nose and heart and feet,
pulling nerves like fine wires,
singing plaints,
through tissues, organs,
hurting and continuing
to stretch the subtle body,
sometimes seemingly beyond its elasticity.

Does grief teach
the ability not to be whole,
does it take a person that far
into incompleteness?

I think so. And then also
that is where love hides.

It ambushes you, warm arms
are suddenly around you,
won’t let you go, tease, play
with your alive surprise
and yes-no-yes laughter.

Such a mystery is grief,
we dance in ways
we never knew the body could.

Sending you lots of love. 

          4.1.2024 Robert Hichens’ birthday and nearly 10 years since he died.

 - Silke Heiss

She wishes you a happy birthday
(after a black harrier swoops across in front of her car)
for Jacques

Had I the black harrier on my hand,
that sharp-eyed, sharp-clawed, sharp-beaked bird,
I’d let him fly, in front of you,
for you to hear his clap of wings,
perhaps a haunting cry.

But I, being me, have only this poem,
which I send you per voice clip,
for you to dance and hum into.

4th December 2023

- Silke Heiss

Beyond language
for Ed

When my forehead surrenders,
puts itself against your shoulder,
you turn away in your sleep,
and my neck angles strangely,
but the discomfort does not matter,
it’s the contact that counts.

I plug myself into you
and good happens –
a wordless, explanationless,
self-evident,
simple
yes of peace.

My thoughts dissolve
into your skin, my woman intuition
streams
into the gleam
of your ripening genius. Something along
those lines.

The rain, which has been massaging
our roof, pounds louder.

 - Silke Heiss